DisclaimerAlthough "Watermelon In Easter Hay"
is part of a narrative, and fulfils a program-music function within "Joe’s
Garage", I want to leave that largely to one side because it impedes
us approaching the music concretely. That is, it diverts our attention
from the actual effect of the music on the listener into vulgar Zappalogy;
where the specifics of music are too easily abandoned in favour of mere
concepts.

Zappa’s attempts
to interrupt the smooth flow of musical illusion, his verfremdungtechnik,
has been dealt with at length elsewhere. What have been less discussed
are the relatively rare moments when he enlists the forces of illusion,
when he mobilises emotional rapture.

The embattled emotional
core of "Watermelon In Easter Hay" has done much to enshrine
it as the revelation of "Zappa the Man", pure and unspoiled
by the astringent intellect of "Zappa the iconoclast". When
the Late Show produced a special on Zappa, near the end of his life, the
closing images of Zappa, heavily-drugged, struggling to navigate from
a standing to a sitting position due to the advanced stage of his cancer,
were overlaid with the opening measures of Watermelon In Easter Hay.
Already, to the hypocritical glee of the establishment, the "cynicism"
and "crass smut" of Zappa’s oeuvre were suffering a conversion.
Heartless iconoclasm was reinterpreted, under the pressure of mortality,
as one man’s search for the expressive sublime.

As was to be expected,
this trend reached its peak in the aftermath of Zappa’s death. The Zappa
Family Trust, along with registering his moustache as a trademark, released
a CD called Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa. The release
compiled various renditions of Zappa’s "signature songs". These
tracks were Zoot Allures, Black Napkins, an unreleased blues
and two versions of Watermelon In Easter Hay. Dweezil Zappa stated
in the sleeve notes that Watermelon In Easter Hay was "the
best solo Zappa ever played", adding that the quality of the
tune results from Zappa’s unique "tone and personality".
(1)

An earlier report
from Ben Watson that Dweezil had claimed these tunes as representative
of Zappa’s "soul", proved to be exaggerated, (as is so
often the case) but the philosophical implications are the same. (2) In
the place of the soul we find the secular bourgeois equivalent: the free-floating,
self-contained personality. Like all hard business-people, the Zappa Family
Trust are profoundly sentimental: as usual the belief in private initiative
runs in natural tandem with an isolated and heartfelt individualism.

In "The Jargon
Of Authenticity" Adorno spoke of Hegel’s undialectical inheritors
who

"… cleanse
inwardness of that element which contains its truth, by eliminating self-reflection,
in which the ego becomes transparent as a piece of the world. Instead
the ego posits itself as higher than the world and becomes subjected to
the world precisely because of this." (3)

Dweezil’s remarks
present an identical paradox wherein the greatest piece of music Zappa
ever recorded is the piece where he sounds least like himself. Dweezil’s
reading of Watermelon In Easter Hay is a classic piece of transcendent
idealism. As the great personality is purified and concentrated through
the magical prism of self-expression, the extraneous jokes and contradictions
are burnt off like slag, leaving just the Man under the stars.

This transcendental
schema is engraved into the musical language itself, as the opening guitar
note sounds in a medium-high register and then soars like the soul from
the body towards unfathomed heights. The opening phrase comes to rest
and the concluding note is held in suspension, the mortal fingers straining
to maintain the spirit’s vibration. As the note fades the fingers allow
the tightened string to relax back into silence. After the second repeat
of the phrase, the guitar offers a parenthetical comment, of the kind
at which David Gilmour excels, ending with two trembling glissandi. (4)
The blissful mumble on the death-bed as the perishable body returns to
eternity; this is the unbearable pathos which accompanies the extinction
of the unique personality.

But what seems to
have escaped his notice, and the notice of many other Zappa experts, is
that this "soul-searching", far from concentrating the elements
of which Zappa’s music is made, does the reverse, it dissolves them. This
is precisely because, stripped of its materialism, it’s "transparency
as part of the world", Zappa’s music no longer possesses any
power. The music "becomes subjected to the world", that
is, it becomes subjected to the conventions of heroic rock guitar-playing.

This is a dynamic
peculiar to Watermelon In Easter Hay. Whilst there are other equally
emotional guitar outings in appa’s catalogue, none has the stupefying
aridity of Watermelon. Consequently, no other tracks have been
so effective at drawing the praise of those who desire to neuter Zappa’s
consistently embarrassing refusal to play by the rules of bourgeois art.

For the purposes
of comparison it is instructive to take Stucco Homes from Return
Of The Son Of Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar. Although certainly emotive,
spacious and "progressive" in the 70’s sense, Stucco Homes
nevertheless manages to maintain a dialectic between the speculative harmonic
shifts of the two guitars and Colaiuta’s drums. Colaiuta’s playing is
a tough negotiation between the discipline of the bar and the freedom
of movement which implies its negation. As such the drum-part alone appears
as an almost unsustainable balancing-act. Although superficially a "free-floating"
guitar showcase, the actual musical effect is one of tension, as the listener
attempts to follow the divergences and correlations between the musicians’
lines of thought.

It is in vain that
we search for comparable engagement in Watermelon In Easter Hay.
It is precisely stupefaction which it engenders. It is a replica
of emotional rapture which attempts to quarantine the intellect, and its
characteristic negative role, in favour of dissolving the listener in
sentimental solidarity with a perceived individual expressive subject.
But since it is nothing more than a replica, the promised dissolution
of the listener’s ego realises itself as the opposite: he is confronted
by a formalised internality where his identification with this stupid
and partial sublime merely confirms his isolation. As Adorno says:

"… inwardness
becomes a value and a possession behind which it entrenches itself; and
it is surreptitiously overcome by reification." (5)

Speaking on Radio
1, Zappa revealed the "real title" of the song as "Trying
to play a guitar solo in this band is like trying to grow a watermelon
in Easter Hay". (6) Equally when freedom becomes the private
property of the isolated individual, artistic production is like trying
to grow authentic expression in a desert of freeze-dried abstractions.

The surrounding music
itself forges a fully-furnished replica of eternity, cycling between two
arpeggiated chords, the drums booming and dream-like under swathes of
reverb and delay; a serviceable illusion of endless space. Vinnie Colaiuta
is reduced to Nick Mason by the oppressive pseudo-import of the production.
(7) No speculative thought is allowed to disrupt the eternal cycle. It
is a schema which tries to do away with time. In so doing it also attempts
preclude the possibility of material analysis.

An early prototype
of Watermelon in Easter Hay recorded live in 1978 was included
on the Frank Zappa Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa CD. (8) Shorn
of reverb and the isolation of studio conditions the piece sounds, if
anything, less immediate. The guitar stands in sharp relief to the rest
of the music which rings with emaciated pureness. Zappa seems to be struggling
to plot a route through this juiceless setting. The effect is like that
of a diner furiously peppering a slice of white bread. Zappa’s blue-notes
sound curiously misplaced, the band seem helpless to intervene in the
stand-off. The whole experience, ‘though it manages to retain its celebrated
poignancy, is utterly different to the experience of the finished album
track. Free of the domination of reverb, the fabric of the music comes
apart. The cracks in the cardboard sublime are revealed, the façade
of expression falls away from eternity and we see, as Zappa said elsewhere,
"the brick wall at the back of the theatre". (9)

Faced with this document,
it becomes clear to what extent Watermelon owes its powerful narcotic
effect to studio production. Zappa always insisted on a professional approach
to production and employed a whole barrage of effects to this end, even
when, as on You Are What You Is, it results in a stifling flatness.
(10) This professionalism draws fire from punks as well as original Mothers
fans, but has the merit of eschewing the frequent fetishisation of the
"authenticity" attributed to poor audio quality. However, Watermelon
is unusual from the point of view of its production. Firstly because it
refuses the rupture of Zappa’s musique concrète, or the
openly parodic polystyrene-gloss of Sheik Yerbouti but more importantly,
because it uses unconventional amounts of reverb for very conventional
ends.

The use of reverb
in Watermelon corresponds illuminatingly with the history of the
reverb unit itself. The company Sound Enhancements include, on their website,
a blurb describing its invention:

"When Laurens
Hammond introduced the first Hammond Organ in 1935, most people were only
familiar with the traditional pipe organs they had heard at churches and
theaters. So, when they purchased a Hammond for their homes, they expected
the same room-filling sound they had come to know and love. Of course,
in their thickly carpeted living rooms with low ceilings and drapery covered
windows, they didn’t get it." (11)

The reality of physical
sound refused to underwrite the ideological prejudices of the consumer.
Searching for a solution to this abomination, Laurens Hammond then approached
Bell Laboratories, who had stumbled across spring reverberation whilst
developing long-distance telecommunications technology. From 1939 onward
consumers were treated to the latest in artificial audio-grandeur.

There is a hint of
mocking condescension in the anonymous blurb-writer’s depiction of 30’s
American domesticity, which characterises the commercial expert’s contempt
for the craven consumer. Beneath the marketing gloss is a little satirical
sketch: a picture of the petit bourgeois who revels in the sonic grandeur
of the church organ or the opera-house and seeks to purchase his own little
slice of the expansive sublime. Once outside of the power-structure of
the church or the spectacle of the theatre, in his dingy home, he finds
he has been cheated out of his share of universal exultation and must
make do with his impoverished replica-transcendence.

In Watermelon
reverb is returned to its original function as an artificial means to
disguise the domestic as the sublime. An analogous phenomena is included
in the title itself: Easter Hay, the American trade-name for the plastic
mock-straw in which Easter eggs are packed, is itself another artificial
means of replicating a romantic ideal. (12) In this case the rustic homeliness
by which the alienated consumer attempts to transport himself back to
the craft era.

In a 1999 interview,
Steve Vai spoke of the track in hushed tones, employing some terminology
which revealed that reverb and bourgeois individualism are close linguistic
bedfellows:

"Frank textured
that song with guitar tones and endless sustain... On "Watermelon",
there's such a beautiful, clean, bell-like tone… That song just invites
you in. I don't think people understood the depth of Frank's experimentation
with guitar tone… It's one of Frank's signature songs,"

The interviewer continues:

He ranks "Watermelon"
alongside "Zoot Allures" and "Black Napkins" as prime examples of Zappa's
depth as a guitarist. (13)

The extent to which
Vai has internalised the Zappa Family Trust’s party-line is a salutary
lesson for anyone who believes that expert musicological knowledge alone
is sufficient to understand modern art. The phrase "signature
song" which Vai borrows from Dweezil, appropriates the language
of the legal contract. It is a telling turn of phrase as the signature
compresses the individual’s social power into a squiggle on a cheque,
a Texan death warrant, or an autograph-hunter’s pad. Vai’s "endless
sustain" plays on the properties of the immortal soul, the unending
movement only possible in a gravity-free zone. Most conspicuously of all,
"Depth" is the premier compliment in bourgeois art criticism.
The humanity which the ruling class so brutally deny to their subjects
in the economic and political sphere is permanently quarantined in the
aesthetic, where it is revived as a specious, privately-owned sublime
insulated from the vulgar herd.

This individualism
and its accompanying rapture is not without its more sinister precedents.
Dweezil’s sleevenotes again:

"Without words
Frank was able to communicate his ideas, emotions and his personality
to international audiences"

Wherever there is
talk of the heroic, unitary individual, there is its counterpart: the
hypnotised and adoring throng. In his book The Mass-Psychology Of Fascism,
the Freudian-Marxist Wilhelm Reich spoke of the rise of Hitler and of
the "reactionary historians" who believe that:

"A great
man makes history only inasmuch as he inflames the masses with "his
idea"." (14)

He goes on to unpick
the irrationality of Nazi theory, explaining the way in which the energy
held in stasis by sexual repression can be mobilized by reaction. He emphasises
that the Nazis gained power, not by argument, but by harnessing the irrational
desires of the German people.

Likewise, in Watermelon
the distinctive musical argument of Zappa’s usual soloing unravels, the
listener finds himself, in Vai’s words, "invited in", rather
than smashed against Zappa’s usual contradictions. However, once inside,
the listener is caught in an hermetically-sealed environment, where communication
is replaced by mystification. That even informed listeners frequently
appear unable to recognise the difference attests both to the totalitarianism
irrationality of commodity culture and the attendant sickness of consciousness
under Capitalism.

Zappa once remarked
that the "sabotage" which ruins his music for the casual listener
is the real information. (15) Amidst the consistent interruption, the
splatter and outrage of Zappa’s oeuvre, these rare moments of high-flown
conventional beauty are the most pernicious sabotage of all.

FOOTNOTES(1) Since I don’t
own a copy of this album, this information was given to me over the phone
by Simon Prentis.

(2) Watson’s claim
can be found on pp103 of The Complete Guide To The Music Of Frank Zappa,
published by Omnibus Press in 1998. Well below the high standard of academic
scholarship we have come to expect from this meticulous author.

(4) See, for example,
Gilmour’s scene-setting doodles which preface the main body of Shine
On You Crazy Diamond on "The Floyd’s" Wish You Were Here
(1975). The track was inspired by Syd Barratt’s drug-induced isolation
and so qualifies as another overwrought guitar show-case which duplicates
the alienation it purports to mourn.

(7) Witness any number
of Mason’s appearances. Notably Atom Heart Mother where his extremely
unimaginative fills are out of time, and the video The Delicate Sound
Of Thunder, where a sweaty, dynamic percussionist is drafted in to
handle the fast stuff, whilst our Nick plods away like Jabba the Hut.

(8) See footnote
(1). Likewise, Simon Prentis played me the live version of Watermelon
In Easter Hay over the ‘phone. Which, given that the album is £27,
was considerably cheaper.

(10) The flatness
of the production on You Are What You Is was pointed out to me
by Nathan "Nes.Co." Blunt, who bemoaned the lack of sonic shocks
in its evenly-mixed palette. He contrasted it to the exhilarating entry
of Captain Beefheart’s harmonica (or musette, I haven’t decided) on Tarotplane
from the album Mirror Man.

(11) unattributed
blurb-writer, www.accutronicsreverb.com/history.htm

(12) Many thanks
to Andrea Brady for this information.

13) Steve Vai quoted
at www.cht.qc.ca/cht/zappa4.htm

(14) Wilhelm Reich,
The Mass Psychology Of Fascism, first English language edition
1946,pp34.